Art Art A Day-maximally capitalized creativity of modern artistic labor

Concept by Chang Liu (Leo) in collaboration with guest artists

Ongoing project started in 2025

Concept:

Art Art A Day-maximally capitalized creativity of modern artistic labor is a radical durational performance project by Chang Liu (Leo), unfolding over the course of a full year. Each day, a new work is created — in any media, any form, any mood. This practice is not just about art-making, but about confronting the daily grind of creativity itself under late capitalism. With its relentless pace, Art Art A Day sits at the crossroads of endurance, critique, and transformation.

In this practice, Chang pushes the boundaries of what it means to be an artist in an age of content churn, algorithmic relevance, and capitalist exhaustion. How does one maintain authenticity while constantly producing? What happens when creativity becomes routine? What is lost, what is found, when art is made every single day?

This living archive of experiments, collaborations, and fleeting moments intentionally disrupts the commodification of art, resisting the polished product in favor of the messy, vulnerable, and often invisible processes behind it. Through diverse media — video, writing, drawing, sound, dance, performance, trash, jokes — Chang engages a spectrum of making that resists singular narratives of success or coherence.

The practice is driven by research themes including:

• Process over product: privileging the doing over the outcome

• Capitalist time structures: resisting 24/7 productivity and value extraction

• De-commodified art: making without selling, producing without profiting

• Multiple collaboration: inviting multiplicity, chance, and interruption

• Endurance practice: testing thresholds of body, time, and spirit

• Artistic sustainability: surviving and subverting burnout

Over 365 days, Art Art A Day becomes a durational protest and poetic exercise — an accumulation of gestures, failures, insights, exhaustion, joy, and survival.

This is not just about making art every day. It’s about asking: what happens to the artist when art is forced into the rhythm of labor? And what might emerge when we keep making anyway?

Artistic and Mental Challenges in Art Art A Day:

• Sickness & physical fatigue — battling health issues while needing to create daily

• Creative block / idealessness — struggling to generate new concepts every single day

• Boredom / repetitiveness — feeling stuck in cycles of sameness or predictability

• Exhaustion & burnout — emotional and physical depletion from relentless output

• Copy or self-repetition — accidental recycling of themes, forms, or ideas

• Trash art / perceived low quality — confronting moments of “bad” or rushed work

• Last-minute rushes & “magic” — relying on spontaneous inspiration under pressure

• Delays & procrastination — resisting the urge to skip or postpone daily creation

• Perfectionism paralysis — wanting every piece to be flawless but needing speed

• Authenticity crisis — doubting whether the work is “real” or meaningful

• Comparison anxiety — measuring yourself against other artists or your past work

• Disconnection from audience — questioning who this art is for or if anyone sees it

• Emotional vulnerability — exposing personal states daily through work

• Monotony & loss of novelty — the challenge of keeping things fresh and engaging

• Time management conflicts — juggling art with other life responsibilities

• Isolation vs collaboration tension — balancing solo work with guest artist inputs

• Material and resource constraints — limited supplies forcing improvisation or limits

• Mental fragmentation — scattered focus and difficulty concentrating consistently

• Self-doubt & imposter syndrome — questioning your legitimacy as an artist

• Creative risk vs safety — pushing boundaries while needing to maintain momentum

• Documentation burden — capturing, archiving, and sharing work without losing energy

• Emotional highs and lows — riding waves of motivation and despair

• Audience expectation pressure — feeling accountable to followers or collaborators

• Shifts in meaning or intent — evolving concepts that may contradict earlier work

• Economic precarity — sustaining yourself financially while engaging in non-commercial work

• Physical workspace challenges — limited or unsuitable spaces for daily creation

• Mental health fluctuations — anxiety, depression, or other mental health struggles affecting output

• Technology or technical failures — glitches in digital or media tools disrupting practice

• Public vs private tension — negotiating what to share openly and what to keep intimate

• Skepticism about value or impact — wondering if the project makes a difference